Smart Phone Anki classes

In an earlier post, I wrote about the significant changes I made in a class from first to second semester:

1) meeting once a week in a computer lab so students could make their own decks and cards

2) incorporating more hands-on pair Anki work with student pairs quizzing each other on their decks via smart phones in class.

It will be interesting to compare their questionnaire and Anki usage statistic results as it was the same group of students studying the same material. However, that is for another post and/or another paper.

Other opportunities I had in this past semester to try different ways of teaching with Anki were two English Communication classes. These are elective classes, so the students usually are motivated, but also the teacher has the freedom to teach whatever they want.

As many teachers do not have ready access to computer labs, but more and more students have smart phones (a term which will also include other devices like iPod Touches and iPads), I decided to incorporate what I had learned about teaching with Anki from first semester into the classroom but by mobile device only.

An interesting side note: When I first started teaching in Tokyo three years ago, very few students had western-style smart phones (primarily iPhones). The Japanese cell phones very were very advanced in their own way but did not have the same finger swipe/drag interface or large, bright screens for Internet browsing, media or games. Now, however, almost all of my students either have iPhones or some type of Android based smart phone.

The plan worked out that at least half of the students had smart phones, and so with pair work, there was always be enough hardware in the class. I also brought my own iPod Touch and netbook (laptop) to class to lend to student pairs in case of battery failure or other problems.

Overall, the classes were successful in terms of exposing students to Anki and helping me see strengths and weaknesses in my attempts to use Anki in the classroom.
Many of the problems were related to classroom management, technological problems, and other details.

Sometimes all the time spent explaining Anki to students, helping them fix problems with decks/cards/username/password in class, waiting for students to login in, keeping students focused on task and not speaking Japanese with each other, etc., seemed quite inefficient and felt very frustrating. However, if we feel that Anki is important enough that our students should understand it and learn how to use it, then this may be the price to pay. There may never be a perfect system, but by our successes and failures, we can get better and better at it...

Sweet success!

I was checking the status of classes' Anki decks today while they were studying in pairs with smart phones. At this point, they should have about 260 cards generated from EFL Press's Topic Talk, an excellent book that works perfectly with Anki. The majority of students have most of the cards or are working on keeping up. Some are complete slackers. What can you do?

However, today, I noticed that one student, who only has about 5o cards in her deck for my class, also had second deck in her account.

"What's this?" I asked her. "Oh, chigau kurasu," she replied. A different class. Intrigued, I had her click over to the other deck. It was for a business hospitality class and consisted mostly of airport abbreviation codes.

"Did you make this deck?" I asked. She nodded her head, looking sheepish. "Why?" I continued.

She replied, haltingly, "Anki is good. It helps me study."

I swear I almost hugged her. I've been riding that buzz all day. Call me a geek, but that is a huge success in my book and fills me with hope!